a San Francisco Bay area

intentional community/urban retrofit
co-housing/mini-ecovillage

We are a small urban community 20 miles south of San Francisco in two
4-unit apartment buildings facing the lagoon between San Mateo and Foster City. We share gardening,some meals, and other interests. There are more than
two dozen fruit trees and extensive organic gardens.

We
enjoy the view from our spa, deck, and dock. This location is
wonderful: lots of birds, sunrises and moonrises over the water, access
to a bike path a 1/2 block away, large park with playground, tennis
courts, etc., one-two blocks away, other recreational opportunities
nearby with the city amenities of proximity to freeway and public
transportation including express buses to downtown San Francisco and to
the San Francisco Airport as well as to the East Bay. This gives us a
connection to the BART extension. Caltrain is a little over a mile
away and also connects to BART at our closest station in Millbrae.

Originally
we
were
looking
at
the co housing model and though this is not the way cohousing usually forms, it
seemed like a viable alternative in the high priced San Francisco Bay
area. It did not seem too different that the N Street model. I
have heard this type of model called virtual cohousing or urban retrofit
development. (After many years of hearing about them, I
finally got to visit in December 2005) Temescal
Creek Cohousing in Berkeley is another
retrofit
cohousing
community. There have been two different
cohousing core groups on the Peninsula working on developing the
traditional cohousing model but both have disbanded because of the
difficult in finding an appropriate site. (In 2007, I heard of another
group forming in Redwood City.) Later I
became more aware of the ecovillage
model and that felt more like what we were up to. While waiting.....and
waiting to purchase our second building all community members besides
the founders were renters. We welcome others to become co-owners though may be still keeping one or
two apartments as rentals. The present mortgage market has made it close to impossible to have co-owners and currently we are primarily a community of renters.

Navigating
the
website:links
to
other pages within site are in italics.

Agriculture

Organic
Gardening has been a primary focus on this site since the beginning of
its formation. Our gardens have been through many transformations and a
description of the process can be found on the historical earlier version of this site.
We have studied a variety of organic/sustainable gardening techniques
over the years. We explored the use of Permaculture
and have also been very interested in Biodynamic
Agriculture. Penny Livingston of the Permaculture
Institute
of
Northern
California,
now
called theRegenerative
Design Institute brought her Introduction to Permaculture workshop
to us in March 1998 to provide information to local folks about how to
apply these principles to an urban backyard and began our gardening
process.

In
January 2004, we completed an extended Urban
Permaculture Course and were certified as permaculture designers.
Now, with all the map technology from google, you can even see where
we, and other permaculturists are on a map. Some other sites
with permaculture design principals are the Permaculture Institute and from New Zealand. We also have an interest and some
training in biointensive
methods. Brian has studied mycology
and we even have some mushrooms growing in our garden. His
studies have furthered what we originally learned when studying
biointensive gardening. "To grow healthy, productive plants you need
healthy, productive soil. It is the organisms in the soil that provide
the food plants need, in the form they need, when they need it," says
Dr. Elaine Ingham from the Soil FoodWeb. We have incorporated what we learned
from
Dr
Ingham in forming a new business, a mobile compost tea
center called Communi-tea.
Being involved with that business is also a possibility for community
members.

Currently
we
have
extensive
gardens
mostly in raised beds made with recycled wood
and stone. We have planted about thirty fruit trees with multiple varieties grafted on to some of them, as well as
berries, veggies, and herbs. In 2002, some of our raised beds were
designed as a modified labyrinth. (These are behind the second building
which we were not able to purchase until 2005.)

The labyrinth in July 2002

Lots of
extensive work was done on the labyrinth the summer of 2007 with the
support of many new community members. The beds were raised further and filled with deep soil
comprised of the decomposed wood chips which had been in the paths,
compost made on site, and composted saw dust and horse manure picked up
from Woodside, and the soil that had been previously developed. The
process was continued with the other half of the labyrinth the summer
of 2008. Some additional very deep beds were made in the first set of
beds behind the first building. So over the past five or six years, we
have moved from hardpan to 3-5 feet of quality soil.

2008 was a great year for
sunflowers....
and lots more reworking of garden beds and the soil.
We came up with some new ideas on how to do raised beds.

We have
a large hoop greenhouse and a small rigid greenhouse which is used for
starting seeds. We have chickens which aid in the composting process as
well as worm boxes and other forms of compost. We are in the process of
building a gray water system with ponds and surrounded by cob benches.
We get some of our produce from the garden. We also support a local CSA getting much of
the rest of our produce from the folks at Mariquita Farm. The garden is
also used for our weekly common meals, which tend to be vegetarian
or what is described as "pescatarian", but always have a vegetarian
alternative.

One of
the agricultural projects that I have become more and more interested
in is beekeeping. Brian has been
managing bees here for the past two years, but said he would not
continue unless I joined him in the activity. I took the beginning course with
the San Mateo Bee Guild in March 2010 and we are on our way. I
have begun to create a separate web page for that activity and to
promote the sale of our honey....actually the honey that the bees in
our keeping are producing.

Do
check out more photos
on line.....
I have lots more current pictures, but have not found time to post them
yet.

Oh, wow....I just learned that I can embed that slideshow right here. Thanks Picassa, but they are even larger if you look on them at their site.

Values:

Some communities are more
values based than others. The smaller the group is, the more we feel it
needs to share values. Many of our values can be summed up in the
concept of sustainability. We have been involved with a local planning
group called Sustainable
San Mateo County. We have been nominated for a sustainability award
by the Green Party of San Mateo. I am impressed by the Environmental
Values Policy Statement of the forming East Bay Cohousing. Another
excellent description of the values we espouse can be found on the
pages of the Global
Ecovillage Network.

Some of
the strong values we hold that we would like to see "grow" on this site
include: growing some of our own food; supporting local organic farmers
in farmers' markets or in a CSA;
reduce, reuse, recycle; avoiding buying food and other items that
contribute to the destruction of local economies and the environment;
and consensus decision making. We want to share time in the garden and
at the dinner table with the people we live with.... in a non-smoking
environment. We have had deliveries from a local CSA for the past 5 years. We are the pick-up site for over 20 families. More information about Community Supported Agriculture can also be found on one of my favorite resources, Wikipedia.

Who we are:

Well, I keep saying we and you probably want to know who is
behind all this. You can find out a lot about us by looking at the
website I developed for our rural project in Washington State called Dragon Belly Farm. This site
also provides extensive links to many of our areas of interest and
commitment. Brian's pursuit of marble mosaic was inspired by our trips
to Damanhur, a spiritual
community in Italy. Since that time, he has created counters, floors, and
walls.

Brian and I have been involved with the communities movement
since the late 70's and intensively since we purchased our Washington
property almost two decades ago. When we originally moved here, we
anticipated returning to a rural area when we "retire." (This picture
wa taken the first year we began gardening....so many changes.) Now our
options have expanded. In the meantime, we wish to develop and
participate in urban community. Brian is working as a machinist for
United Airlines. My name is Sanda. In 2009, I retired from my work as a teacher. You
can find out a little more about us by looking at my home page.

It amazed
me when I looked at this picture taken in 2008 and saw how much we have
done, as this picture is taken in almost the same spot as the one of
Brian leaning on a rake almost a decade earlier. And if you roll your mouse over the picture, you can see what it looked like in 2010 taken from a similar spot.

Shared ownership

We
began on this process slowly and probably naively. In February 1998, we
purchased one of eight 4-unit apartment buildings. We expected to be
purchasing an adjacent second 4-unit building two years later, but the
owner has delayed for various "good reasons", but finally he committed
to selling it and we closed escrow on July 1, 2005. We hoped to
eventually have the buildings owned by their occupants and had been
investigating what form of shared ownership would best fit the
situation. Sharing ownership of a 4-plex does give one opportunity for
relatively affordable housing. Becoming a condo is probably not
feasible; co-op ownership is not usually used in California; so after
attending a real estate seminar in San Francisco, I found that "Tenants
in
Common" is an increasingly common way for folks to buy their own
home in our high priced real estate market. " The current real estate and mortgage market has pretty much put the idea of co-owners on hold.

Joining us:

We are
interviewing and actively spending time with people interested in
participating in our vision of sustainable community within the city of
San Mateo. We are particularly looking for other gardeners or people
who desire to learn while putting time and energy into the garden. I
often advertise current openings using Craigslist....as well as
having listings in the Intentional Communities Directory and links from
their online directory as well as link from the Ecovillage
site and the Cohousing
site. More information on the process to become a community member can
be found in the community charter.

Renovation and
possibilities for expansion

We
expanded our dock early in 2002 using Nexwood
made from recycled plastic and rice straw.We feel that photovoltaics increase our movement towards
being a model of sustainable living and we completed installation for
the whole building and our meters started spinning backwards in
February 2004. Last year, we completed the extension of our deck so
that it connects with decking to the other upstairs apartment.
Accessibility has been increased with stairway (salvaged from a house
that was being demolished) in the backyard so that folks from the
downstairs as well as the upstairs apartment will have easy access to
that deck, which will also create more common space. This was a part of
a more extensive remodeling project on
our apartment which included adding a loft on a third level and making
use of a lot of recycled or sustainable building materials. I have
created another page which shows pictures of our remodeling process.

Three years later in July 2007, you can see our loft
in the background.

Dreams: We
had hoped that new owners would continue renovation, adding to both
personal and common space, while working as environmentally sensitive
as possible within the limitations of a retrofit. At this point, there
is a plan for people in the second building to add on to their units.
We certainly expect upgrading and remodeling. The city will allow us to
add more square footage though we cannot add more bedrooms. We would like to see a deck
built on the new building and possibly a bridge between the two. We
have
had
the
vision
of building additional common space over one or
both carports, which would also probably require rebuilding the carport
so that it would be able to support a second story. An alternative plan
would be for the community to take over the apartment which has been
shared with common space. A long term dream would include seeing if
neighboring buildings could be purchased. One more 4 plex would give us
the number of units recommended as a minimum for cohousing.

In the
past, we have always been networking with others to develop this
project. One of the downstairs apartments was set up to be shared as
common space with one bedroom rented out to community members. We
use
the other bedroom as our office. By renting out this apartment as
a one bedroom at a reduced rent, even with support of only one owner,
we were able to provide community space for our weekly meal and meeting
and other community events. The process of developing community took a
great leap forward in December 2000 with the addition of folks with
both community and gardening experience as well as being as avid of
environmentalists as we are. There have been other community
oriented folks who have moved in as renters over the past four years.
By spring 2004, most of those folks had left and we began recreating
our community. (Interestingly, two couples who met here have
gone on to purchase a duplex together in Oakland and two of the single
folks are now sharing an apartment in San Francisco.) At one point there was another owner who remodeled their upstairs 3BR apartment. Shortly after they left, we stopped using the downstairs apartment for common space, but rented it as a one bedroom with den. We had no common space for awhile, but then we decided to make the renovated upstairs 3BR into common space. We rent out two of the bedrooms, and claimed the third bedroom for ourselves as a sort of hobby room. The whole community is enjoying the larger room with a better view.

Community
members:

You can
find out about some of our other community members on our bio page Yet another period of massive change and the bio page needs
extensive changing as people come and go.

We met two of our former community members, Ryanne and Jay when they
came over to interview us about the ecovillage for their video blog in 2007. Check
out their website, lots of videos on different green subjects. Or see
that video here. After a year of great growth for both them and the
community, they left during the summer of 2008 to form a community in
Virginia.

Ryanne and Jay inspired me to learn more about video blogging, and I finally began to do things after I discovered the qik application that turned my iPhone into a video camera that streamed on line. I started doing lots of political videos and one of the ecovillage. In April, they came out with a better quality video application, though it does not live steram. I took two video clips the first week of May 2010. I am working on turning it into an iMovie using still photos as well, but in the meantime, here are the two clips. More recently I have gotten involved with Livestreaming, particularly working with the GPUS channel.

Working with
the Neighborhood

We are
interested in helping create a greater feeling of community in our
culturally and economically diverse neighborhood. We are nestled
between the lagoon which forms our eastern border (with Foster City
across the way), wetlands on the south, Hillsdale Blvd on the north and
Highway 101 on the west with the large Los Prados Park in the center.

Photo
by
Clay
Smith , a former community member and creative
photographer. Check out his time lapse videos taken right here; I
particularly like "Squirrel."

Our
neighborhood is changing rapidly as homes are being remodeled and costs
are doubling. More recently four of the "remodels" are megahouses which
is changing the character and increasing prices. We are served by a
small shopping center 1/2 mile away which includes Marina Market
(primarily Asian), a few restaurants, and other businesses. There are
several other commercial centers within a mile or two including Whole
Foods. Aladdin Market (Middle Eastern) and Trader Joe's.

We are also involved with the Marina
Lagoon Action Committee. The San Mateo Water Ski Club is also part of
this organization. They recently were doing a community project to
improve the shore line to facilitate erosion control. This picture was
taken many years ago on a day when they came over to work on our shore line. This was
done using recycled concrete diverting this construction material from
the waste stream. We look for other opportunities for local community
involvement....and always look for opportunities to reuse or recycle
materials.